Light in the Darkness
by ilovetvalot
Summary: Will Rossi's inner demons best him?


She didn't know why she was bothering. She truly didn't, she thought as she climbed the steps to his office. Hadn't he proven that he didn't want her for anything beyond the physical release she could provide his body during that one long night a month ago. Grimly, she smiled as she stopped outside his office door. Flashes of their night together danced in front of her eyes. The comforting hug he'd given her inside his office after the Trotter case. Her looking up into his dark eyes and leaning forward to press her lips to his. The feel of his hands as he'd pulled her down onto the office couch. The mind blowing sensation of him joining his body to hers. And then, the aftermath. She'd mistakenly thought what had happened was a beginning for them. He'd quickly shot her niave assumption all to hell as he'd kissed her cheek and whispered that while wonderful, it had been a mistake. He'd shattered her young heart. And, he'd never even realized it.

She'd avoided him since then. Professional and poised, she'd pushed her feelings to the far reaches of her mind when she had been forced to deal with him. But, now, standing outside his office door when she knew he was hurting, she couldn't walk away. Couldn't leave him to face his demons alone. She should. She knew this way lead to heartache. But, she couldn't do it. She simply could not do to him what he'd done to her. Abandon him to the pain.

Drawing a deep breath, she prepared herself to enter the very room where her hopes had been trashed and her dreams shattered. Pushing open the door to his darkened office, she found him exactly how she thought she would, sitting on his dark leather couch, bottle of scotch at his side, half empty glass in his hand, staring into space. Looking up to meet her concerned gaze, he muttered three words, "Go away, Pollyanna."

"No, I won't," she told him steadily.

"Want a repeat performance of what happened the last time you entered my lair, little girl?" Rossi asked her with a look of pure evil.

"Why exactly are you trying to hurt me, Rossi?" JJ asked, shaking her head sadly.

Focusing his dark eyes on her, Rossi mentally grimaced. Why was he trying to hurt the only decent thing to touch his world in a very long time. He knew why he told himself he did it. To protect her from him. He'd already failed to do that once, when in a moment of weakness he'd accepted her sweetly offered body. He was much to jaded to touch something as pure as her. He'd already tainted her innocence once. He was determined not to do it again. But he didn't want to hurt her. Didn't want to damage the one thing that he loved but knew he could never really have. He wouldn't be the cause of turning a warm, loving woman into a cynical jaded shell of a human being. And, he knew, if he tried to have anything more than a superficial relationship with the woman standing in front of him, he'd contaminate her. Lessen her. And, he honestly didn't want to do that.

"I don't, JJ. That's why you need to go home," he finally told her hoarsely.

"Talk to me," she said simply, taking a step deeper into the dark room, the only light coming from the streetlights outside.

"I don't want to talk, Jennifer. I want to drink my way through this very aged bottle of scotch and then I want to sleep and not dream," he said quietly.

Biting her lip, JJ wondered if she should just leave him alone. It seemed to be what he wanted. But something, she wasn't sure what it was, told her to stay. To fight, one last time. So instead of the goodbye he wanted her to say, she said, "It wasn't your fault, David."

Laughing bitterly at her words, David spat, "Then whose fault is it then, JJ? I was the one who pulled the trigger."

"Wasn't it you that once told me that we can't save them all?" JJ asked quietly.

"Don't throw my words back at me! Not now!" he snapped.

"Then don't give advise that you're not willing to hear yourself!" she snapped back.

"Why are you really here, Jennifer?" Rossi said, watching her shadow as he took another pull of the scotch in his glass.

"Because, unfortunately, I care about you," JJ said tiredly.

"Didn't I teach you anything a month ago?" Rossi said, pouring more scotch into an already empty glass.

"Oh, you taught me, David," JJ whispered. "Just probably not the lessons you wanted to teach."

"Cryptic. So not what I'd expect from the BAU's bright and shining light," David said snidely.

"Just stop, David," JJ said, finally coming forward to take the scotch bottle out of his hands. "Drinking isn't going to change what happened today or a month ago."

"No, but it dulls the pain," Rossi told her, trying to grab his bottle back.

"Pain? You feel pain over what happened last month? Now, THAT is the joke of the century," JJ told him, setting the bottle down on his desk.

"You think I wanted to hurt you?" David asked.

"I think you wanted my body. I think I was an easy lay for you that night. Do I think you deliberately set out to hurt me, no. Do I think our interlude had any true effect on you, no."

"You're wrong?" David said flatly.

"Trying to get laid again, Rossi?" JJ asked bitterly.

"No." he told her honestly. "I'm not."

JJ turned around to face the man sitting on the sofa. "The great and elusive David Rossi wants me to believe he actually has feelings about what happened between us?"

"Yes, I do. I didn't mean to hurt you," David told her quietly.

"Oh, that's why you sweetly kissed me on the cheek, told me it was a mistake and summarily dismissed me," JJ replied in a voice laced with pain.

"You wouldn't understand, wouldn't listen even if I tried to explain myself," David said, taking a deep gulp of the remaining scotch in his glass.

"Why don't you try me?" JJ asked.

"What would be the point?" David asked, shrugging.

"That's it, David. Go all cold and remote, you're good at it!" JJ said angrily. "Push me away! Damn you! Why can't I just stop caring?"

"How much do you care, Jennifer?" asked David, carefully.

"Not enough to sleep with you again, if that's what you're hoping for," JJ snapped.

"I didn't push you away to hurt you," David confessed quietly. "It nearly killed me to watch you walk out that door. It broke my heart to watch you avoid me…to watch you try to put on a happy face while we worked cases, knowing the whole time that I was the one that was causing your pain."

"Then why did you do it? Why did you push me away? Do I not fit your ideal woman requirements?" asked Jennifer, upset and not bothering to cover the pain.

"You deserve better," Rossi bit out in a raw voice tinged with anguish.

"Better?" asked JJ incredulously.

"Yeah, JJ. Better. Take a long hard look at the man you're so enamored with, honey. I'm old, bitter and jaded. You, on the other hand, are young, vibrant, and still relatively innocent. What the hell do I have to offer you except a hell of a good time in bed! I come with more emotional baggage than you can handle, little girl," he said, shaking his head at her.

"How dare you try and tell me what I'm prepared to deal with? Yeah, you are all the things you just listed. Unfortunately, none of it changes the way I feel! I still want you! You act like you can't change! Damn you, David, you hide in the darkness! And when you touch the light, you run scared!" JJ accused.

"The darkness is familiar, Jennifer. I understand the darkness…I've learned to find my way. But the light, while beautiful, can be every bit as dangerous. It can reveal things you don't want to see," he told her sadly.

"The light can also illuminate the things that you've been missing all these years. If you'd just take a chance and step into it," JJ said, taking a step forward.

Reaching a hand up to the lamp on the table beside him, David flipped the switch and stared into Jennifer's beautiful tear-drenched face. "Don't cry," he whispered. "I can't handle tears from you. Not knowing that I'm the cause. Come here," he said, extending a hand.

"I won't, not without knowing what I'm coming toward," JJ said, holding her ground.

"I've never known anything like what we shared before, Jennifer. It scared me. Fear is not something I have an easy time admitting to. But, if you're willing to try to forgive me for pushing you away," he said, swallowing convulsively, "I'm willing to try to step into the light with you."

Walking to him on trembling legs, JJ allowed him to pull her down beside him. "You'll like the light, David. I promise," she said, laying a wet cheek against his chest.

Years later, when David reflected on that night in his office, he realized that was the instant he'd fallen in love with his wife. And, she'd been right, he liked the light, he thought, gazing at his new daughter being held by her mother. He liked the light a lot.


End file.
